I don't warm up my car, as in the engine, even when its frigid out. I will turn it on, but to defrost and scrape the windows. So it does warm up that way. But if its cold, and i don't need to do that, i get in, start it up, and drive off. I've never ever had ANY issue becasue I don't.

I read an article just yesterday about cold weather car care tips and the mechanic interviewed for the column said that you don't need to warm up your car at all unless it's really cold and even then it only take a couple of minutes. He said that warming up the car for 10-15 minutes is more for the comfort of the driver (heating up the interior of the car) than taking care of the engine. Actually driving the car does a better job of warming it up than letting it idle for long periods of time. So, it seems that you're doing the right thing!

I don't do that, either, so I felt vindicated when I read this.

I think with much older cars (that use a carburetor instead of a fuel injection system) that used to be the case. I remember my sister's car stalling once half a block from home because she only warmed it 2-3 minutes.

Add me to the people who thaw meat on the counter! I can't ever remember to get meat out the 3 days it takes to thaw anything in the fridge.

I also wear clothes without washing (except underwear, I always wash that, and I wash my kids clothes before they wear them.)

I eat cookie dough with raw egg in it. I figure lots of other things have raw/not fully cooked eggs in them that are acceptable to eat so why not cookie dough?

Me too.

Me three. I also lick the beaters when making cake, which also contains raw eggs.

Count me in, too--raw cookie dough, whatever cake batter I can get (there's competition between me and the kids for the beaters and the bowl). I also come from a family with a family recipe for homemade ice cream that uses raw eggs, and we've never, ever used pasteurized eggs.

I feed the outdoor wild birds all winter, and put the seeds right on my porch railings (they are 4" wide) so that I can see them from my kitchen window. This does mean that there will be a mess on my front porch all winter, but it is the easiest for me.

I think this has to be very individual to neighborhoods...I know that mice can and have and do make it into my garage for the birdseed, but there's enough snow that I can see tracks of any critter that comes to the birdfeeders and I've never seen rat-tracks (and I'd *probably* recognize them--I see mice tracks on occasion, and deer tracks, and coon tracks and possum tracks and squirrel tracks [and, of course bird tracks], but never rats).

a few miles away where my parents live, though, they refuse to feed the birds because they get tired of dealing w/ deer on their deck

In my area it's squirrels. They've gotten quite clever at getting things out of bird feeders. But I pretty much never see a rat.

Yup. I get squirrels, too. So I have a squirrel proof feeder. The perches are spring loaded so the weight of a squirrel closes off the ports where the seed comes out. It is quite amusing to watch them trying to figure out how to get the seed.

Logged

After cleaning out my Dad's house, I have this advice: If you haven't used it in a year, throw it out!!!!.

Like others I don't wash new clothes before wearing (except in one rare case where a dress had a nasty chemically smell). I machine wash clothes that say "dry clean only".

I let my baby nap in my arms almost exclusively his first 7 months or so, and rocked him to sleep every night. I also breastfed in bed at night instead of a chair. Since he was 5 months and older I let him sleep in our bed if he wanted to eg when teething distress or similar. People told me off, but all three of us were happy and well rested so I preferred that to spending hours up in the night settling a baby! Or lying awake listening to him cry. It didn't spoil him, and he actually learnt to go to sleep by himself without any issue. He now happily sleeps in his cot both day and night. (And I have happy memories of many hours snuggling my wee bubba before he got so big and independent!)